Innovation and entrepreneurship are key drivers for economic growth and competitiveness. While recent policies also aim at promoting sustainability and better governance, many analysts have pointed to Europe’s inability to create a suitable environment in which a vivid entrepreneurial culture could flourish.

The event, organised by the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) in partnership with the European Parliament, will be hosted by Eva Paunova MEP on 27th April 2016 at the European Parliament. The event intends to validate a new report from CEPS on Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Europe: People, Places and Policies, the result of a six-month Task Force involving authoritative scholars, industry experts, entrepreneurs, practitioners and representatives of EU and international institutions.

Insight Foresight Institute (IFI) has played pertinent role in this taskforce chaired by José Manuel Leceta (Chairman of IFI). Furthermore, Totti Könnölä (Managing Director of IFI) has acted as a co-rapporteur. We highly appreciate that some of the board and council members have also participated in the taskforce meetings.

The outcome is a set of policy recommendations that aim at improving the overall environment and approach for entrepreneurship and innovation in Europe, and a new understanding of the role that “people, places and policies” can and should play within the current context of the European Union. More specifically, the CEPS Task Force agreed upon three key principles: future EU policy for entrepreneurship and innovation should be systemic, simple and, more importantly, tied to societal needs.